August 16, 2007

Mustang Alley's: Ouch!

I heard scary rumors about how much it costs to bowl at the brand-new Mustang Alley's in Harbor East, and I just had them confirmed.

Ready for this?

Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, it costs $55 to rent a lane for an hour. Lanes are limited to parties of five or less people. Mondays through Thursdays, it costs $35. Shoes are $1.50 all the time. I think my wallet just screamed.

General manager Jay Teramani tried to calm me down.

"You've gotta come in here and see what we're doing," he said.

Maybe during the week, Jay. I don't know if The Sun will pay for me to go on the weekend.

Just for kicks, I called the Patterson Bowling Center, which is .7 miles away. They have a special for parties of 10 or more, where two hours of bowling plus shoes is $13 per person. Their regular rates are $4 per person per game and $2 for shoes. That's a little more in my price range.

Comments

That's not that expensive. 5 people divided by $55 = $11 per person/per hour. You figure you'll bowl at least two games an hour. That would cost you $8 at Patterson. Is $3 really that much more expensive???

$12.50 an hour? While not cheap, I wouldn't call it unreasonable. Though you do get double the time for $.50 more at Patterson. The real question it whether or not you can BYOB like you can at the fantastic Patterson Bowling Center (one of Baltimore's best bargains).

If it cost $12.50 per hour, you pay $10.00 for a movie and this is so much more fun than that. The environment is awesome, the food and drinks are too. You have to go see this place to believe it.... It will not be in everyone's price range but it's not meant to be. Great night out!!!

Grow up people. $55 isn't that bad It's only $11 per person. You get what you pay for. You get to eat and drink at the lanes, servers come and take your order at the lane who else does that. The only time you have to leave the lane is to use the bathroom. The place is unbelievable, they have great food and a huge bar with plenty of flat screen tv's.(football season) Yeah you can go to another bowling alley but is it going to be that nice?

This guy has it out for this place, he wrote another article about how its expensive, why dont you get over yourself. ... i want to bowl with Matt stover and Adrian Grenier, so im heading to mustang alleys.

K, you said at patterson for a party of 10 or more it would cost $13 pp for 2 hours? That would cost the party $260. At mustang alleys your party of 10 could rent 2 lanes for 2 hours and it would cost $160, who is really killing your wallet buddy?

I'm no cheapskate when I'm out on the town with friends, but I think the overall experience and of eating, drinking and bowling at Mustang Alleys isn't really worth the hefty pricetag. Swanky surroundings or no, it's still just a bar/restaurant with a pretty typical menu and a few bowling lanes.

It's just another example of someone taking a normally fun concept and trying to make it swanky to make it appeal to the yuppies with too much money and no common sense.

For an example of what to expect, use our party of 7 on a Friday night.

Each couple ordered mid-priced menu items in the $9-15 dollar range, the entire group shared 3 appetizers, and nobody had soft drinks.

The girls in the group drank cocktails and guys generally had beer with the occasional cocktail. 2 lanes were rented, 2 players had their own shoes.

Total damage with tip? $510. Which was $73 dollars a person, or $146 a couple. It would have been more than that, but they knocked $60 off of our bowling because our lane's computer went on the fritz made it impossible for us to finish our game with proper scoring around the 7th frame.

Typically, when we go out to an above average steak house and are eating $18-$25 entrees, with a starter ro 2 soups, and 2 cocktails and 2 beers, we're always under $85 even with a 20% tip! And that's for entrees that are twice the cost of what we had at Mustang Sallys.

If you figure having a great meal locally and then hitting a regular bowling alley afterwards, you're still well under $100 anywhere else.

At the end of the night, nobody in the group ever expecting a $500 bill for bowling, a few drinks and what amounted to sandwiches for dinner.

Some of the drinks on the menu are almost $10, so if you're out celebrating You can find your bar bill well exceeding your dinner in no time at all.

Next time we think bowling, it'll be anyplace else. Bowling was one of the few cheap and fun Baltimore evenings, and it's much more fun when you don't get a $500 bill at the end of the night. There's so many fantastic places to eat in Baltimore and charming bowling alleys with lots of character AND characters, why waste your time and money on average food and a quasi-upscale experience.

Post a comment

All comments must be approved by the blog author. Please do not resubmit comments if they do not immediately appear. You are not required to use your full name when posting, but you should use a real e-mail address. Comments may be republished in print, but we will not publish your e-mail address. Our full Terms of Service are available here.

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments:

Please enter the letter "n" in the field below:

About Erik Maza

Erik Maza is a features reporter at the Baltimore Sun. He writes for several sections of the Sun paper and contributes weekly columns on music and nightlife. He also writes and edits the Midnight Sun blog. He often covers entertainment, business, and the business of entertainment. Occasionally, he writes about Four Loko, The Block, the liquor board, and those who practice "simulated sex with a potted palm tree." Before The Sun, he was a reporter at the Miami New Times. He's also written for Miami magazine, the Orlando Sentinel, the Sarasota Herald Tribune and the Gainesville Sun. Got tips? Gripes? Pitches? He's reachable at erik.maza@baltsun.com. Click here to keep up with the dumb music he's listening to.

Midnight Sun covers Baltimore music, live entertainment, and nightlife news. On the blog, you'll find, among other things, concert announcements, breaking news, bars closings and openings, up-to-date coverage of crime in nightlife, new music, round-the-clock coverage of Virgin Mobile FreeFest, handy guides on bars staying open past 2 a.m. on New Year's Eve and those that carry Natty Boh on draft. Recurring features include seven-day nightlife guides, Concert News, guest reviews of bars and concerts, Wednesday Corkboard, and photo galleries, as well as reader-submitted photos. Thanks for reading.